Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, across the country today, the most important conversations about health are not happening in doctors’ offices. They are happening at kitchen tables, in workplaces and between neighbours on the sidewalk. They are conversations about making rent, about the cost of groceries, about finding work and about whether everything is going to be okay this week, this month or in this lifetime. These are, fundamentally, conversations about health. We often think about those conversations as conversations about the economy, as if those two things were not, in fact, one and the same. I have spent 20 years as a family doctor in my riding. I have had very important conversations with my patients in my examination room, yet I am certain that the most important conversation about my patients’ health, my constituents’ health and the health of every single Canadian is not any conversation I have had before. It is the one that we are having today and that we will be having tomorrow. It is one that will be ongoing in the House. It is the one that I came here to be a part of. I rise today as the new member of Parliament for University—Rosedale on the day that the House debates the spring economic update. I rise with my eyes wide open to the work that we have before us and the responsibility that we have all been given. I also take my seat with a clear sense of who has sat in the House before me. Physicians have been elected to our Parliament since well before Confederation. The very first physician elected to Parliament kept his medical bag under his seat in the House. I left my medical bag in Toronto, but my impulse to support the health of Canadians is the same as if I had brought it with me. I have joined this team because the health of the country is a bigger challenge than any one doctor can try to fix. The bigger medicine is right here, and I am filled with gratitude for the opportunity to participate in that work. I thank the voters of University—Rosedale. They have entrusted me to be their voice, and I fully intend to continue to earn that trust every single day. I thank my partner and my daughter for their inspiration, encouragement and patience. There are also my parents. My mom is a francophone immigrant from Egypt who landed in Montreal, and my dad is an anglophone boy born into a Hamilton family that stretches back many generations. I thank them teaching me that there is no one way to be Canadian. Actually, I thank them for teaching me that the fact that there is no one way to be Canadian is precisely the thing that makes our country great. University—Rosedale is located in the heart of downtown Toronto. While I would never claim that it is the centre of the universe, in a very real sense, it reflects much of this country in 14 square kilometres. Yes, it is an urban riding in our biggest city, but 40% of my neighbours were born in another country. Many more come from another province. We have the largest university campus in Canada. We have one of the densest concentrations of hospitals on the continent. Our community is filled with the energy of Kensington Market, the Annex, Koreatown, Chinatown, Trinity-Bellwoods, Yorkville, Little Italy, Rosedale and so many more distinct neighbourhoods. We have a vibrant urban indigenous community doing incredible work at places like the Native Canadian Centre at 16 Spadina Road. That street name, I would like to mention, is an anglicization of the Anishinabe word ishspadina. University—Rosedale is a riding that contains Canada’s past, its present and its future. The document before the House is the spring economic update. Economic health is health, period. Of course, part of a country’s health is determined by what happens inside hospitals and doctors’ offices, but more is determined elsewhere, by whether we can access an education, whether our child has eaten breakfast, whether the air we breathe is clean, whether the streets we walk are safe, whether there is a job in our future and whether there is a future in our job. Therefore, housing policy is health policy. The Canada child benefit is health policy. Access to food is health policy. Apprenticeship training, community safety, innovation and investments in infrastructure are all health policies. This is what I have learned in my 20 years treating Canadians: The best medicine, the one that does the most good for most people, is not medicine at all. It is a stable address; a meal at school every day; a good job with a good salary; and the social programs that this country has built and must have the courage to protect. That is what 24,000 of my constituents using the Canadian dental care plan are asking for. That is what 50,000 of them benefiting from our GST credit are asking for. That is what every person under 35 in my riding who rents instead of owns, because for them the dream of home ownership is exactly that, just a dream, is asking for. The Prime Minister said that this government’s goal is to build Canada strong. A stronger Canada is a healthier Canada. That is what I see in the spring economic update: the expansion of the national school food program, the Canada groceries and essentials benefit, GST relief for first-time homebuyers and investments in community safety. Each of these measures is a brick. Together, we will build a strong wall that will protect the promise of a strong and healthy Canada. Speaking of building with bricks, I want to spend a moment on affordable housing, because it is among the most powerful upstream health interventions any government can make. Since their peak, home prices in this country are down 20%. Rents are down 9%. Those numbers are not abstractions in University—Rosedale. They represent a multi-generational family that gets to keep its duplex in Little Portugal, a graduate student who can afford their first apartment in the Annex or a new Canadian who does not have to leave the downtown core to raise their children. Still, there is much more work to be done. We are just getting started. The late Senator Hugh Segal, one of the most thoughtful Canadians of his generation, used to speak of what he called the two essential freedoms: “freedom from fear and freedom from want.” He believed that any country worth its name owed both of them to its people. He was right. That is what the word “progressive” means to me. It is a commitment to equitable and decent public services and a growing and fair economy. It is values and value in the same breath, at the same time, every single time. This spring economic update is both a “freedom from fear” and a “freedom from want” document. It speaks to diversifying our trade partners and building the supply chains we will need when the next external shock arrives, and there will be one. As the Prime Minister has said, “we [must] take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.” That is not only economic insurance; it is ensuring the strength and health of a country that intends to be around for a very long time. The purpose of growing and protecting our economy is not so that it looks good on paper. The purpose of our economy is people, supporting them and creating the conditions for them to achieve their fullest potential. It is taking the world as it is, yes, and also working to move it closer to the world we want it to be. To me, that is what we mean when we speak of a Canada strong for all. To my new colleagues on every side of the House, I will bring to this work the skills of every good family physician, which I have learned in two decades of medicine and leadership. They are listening and building relationships while holding the unshakable conviction that the purpose of any institution, whether it is a hospital or Parliament, is to show up for real people in the hardest moments of their lives. Members can count me in for that for the spring economic update and all the work ahead.